Broken Boulder [m] Wishes

The man halted, his already-frowning features twitching into a deeper scowl. Atlas had been pacing, deep in thought, when the familiar voice of his dilatory son cracked across the little moor. He hesitated. How long now had he and his wife been kept waiting? How many nights?

But perhaps it was important. He straightened and moved to meet Acheron, expression settling into neutrality as he allowed his thoughts to wander. Before the departure of @Aelius, his second son had shown little initiative. He'd been a sullen boy, soft, the first to cry out for his mother and the slowest to obey his father's commands. Atlas had long accepted that there was a price for the brilliance of a bloodline. Genius, after all, was only a very certain sort of oddity. An aberration, by some miracle tuned to the exact degree at which it would be lauded rather than scorned.

So his children were scorned by the world, most of them. Sickly creatures, lost souls. Was it any surprise that Acheron should be another?

His boy had changed after Aelius left, but even so, it was hard to say what he might become. Who could say what shadows lurked in a young man's heart? At Acheron's age the boy hardly knew his own heart, still caught in the era of taking direction from his loins. Atlas had seen how he looked at that other boy. Cassius. He would need to correct it soon, more gently this time in memory of his beautiful broken Tybault.

Or perhaps not; there was a gilded woman in the frostbitten ferns, beside his son. Atlas turned sharp eyes on the boy at once. Too lazy to win a wife, so you steal one like some savage? And - His lip curled in disgust as he shot another glance at the feminine figure, the limp angles of her recline and the battered look to her. You nearly kill her in the process. No, I don't want to hear it.

Atlas waved off his son's stammered attempt at an explanation. As if this girl could pass for one of his granddaughters.

There isn't a hint of Medeiros in her, and besides; I see the way you look at her, boy. I'm not blind.

He turned away from his son's shame, toward the girl. Atlas stepped closer, assessing the girl's state. Are you awake, girl? He nudged her shoulder once.